I’ve been working at a slower pace this summer, so the science-y deep dive I’d planned for this week is a little delayed. I’m hoping to have it ready for you in the next week or two, but the truth is I’ve been really struggling with focus lately.
I’m sure it’s partly just the typical dip in productivity that happens for most of us when schools are out, pools are open, and work starts to take its rightful place in lives that fill up with outings and houseguests, weddings and reunions. I’m also a huge summer person, born and raised in northern California but always felt I’d be happier in Los Angeles, with its perpetual sunshine and year-round beaches—and yet somehow have found myself living in the NYC area for the past two decades. So during these blissful few months of the year when the temperatures climb, I feel the urge to grab summer by the sandy feet and let it drag me along like a wagon full of beach gear.
There have been some less-sunny things stealing my focus, too: the constant drip of upsetting news that’s reached a new level of intensity in the past few weeks; the pit in my stomach when I think about the future of democracy and our increasingly unbridgeable political divides; the economic and logistical hurdles of trying to raise a toddler in a system where childcare can be either high-quality or affordable but not both (and for too many people is neither); the general not-normal-ness of life in the U.S.
Beyond all that, though, there’s something else going on with me that’s been taking my attention away from work. I don’t want to share too much because I’m still in process with it, and I try to stick to my policy of not talking about anything publicly until I’ve really figured it out for myself and with my trusted people (or as I’ve said before, “share scars, not wounds”). And then there are some things I’ll never talk about on the internet, no matter how long I’ve had to process them.
But in this case, I realized it might be helpful to discuss my situation in broad strokes because it’s relevant to something that so many of us go through in wellness culture: getting a new diagnosis, and the insatiable curiosity, vulnerability to misinformation, and identity shifts that often go along with it. I’ve been kind of obsessed with learning all about this new condition, and I wonder if you can relate.
